


Intro to Reparations

by cause_it_rhymes



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Breaking Up and Getting Back Together, M/M, Making Out, annie's done with their shit, pillows and blankets rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29934789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cause_it_rhymes/pseuds/cause_it_rhymes
Summary: "Our friendship is dead""I'll do you one better," he said, taking a step closer. "Our relationship is dead."OR: Trobed were dating before breaking up during Pillows and Blankets, and don't know how to go about fixing things.
Relationships: Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	Intro to Reparations

**Author's Note:**

> This was not at all what this fic was supposed to be, but it kind of took a mind of its own halfway through. It takes place 2 weeks after Pillows and Blankets, and the italics are flashbacks to the war. It's a little messy but I hope you like it :)

Abed woke up in a cold sweat that was starting to get familiar, limbs tangled up in the sheets. He reached next to him for a body he knew wasn’t there, but hoped that maybe, by some sort of miracle, the entire thing had been a dream. A sick, twisted, nightmare of a dream, sure, but at least he could’ve still woken up to Troy’s arm draped over his stomach and his hand curled in his hair. But instead, he sat up alone in the bottom bunk, hands gripping the sheets and eyes blinking the blanket fort back into focus.

The blanket fort.

He can’t look at it anymore without his entire world seeming to collapse, the walls he usually keeps up around a specific part of his brain crumbling to dust like it’s nothing. Every time he sees it he thinks with bitterness about the irony of the situation, how he’s been forced to move to the one room that would be a constant reminder of the worst day of his life.

\------

_ Abed felt his phone buzz during a commercial break in Ski Shoot Sing, and winced at the memory of the most recent text he’d received. Warily, he pulled out his phone and opened the message from Jeff that asked him to meet outside the library to discuss battle strategy. He informed Magnitude and Leonard of where he was going, just in case, and snuck out after the winner of the show was announced. _

_ Abed rounded the corner to the little alcove Jeff had wanted to meet in, and stopped dead in his tracks. He narrowed his eyes at the same time Troy did, clearly also unaware of the true intentions of this meeting. _

_ “This has to stop,” Jeff announced to the two of them, in his Winger voice, seeming to have some kind of speech prepared. But Abed didn’t want to hear any speech that might make him forget all the things his boyfriend had said that they both knew he should never have said. _

_ “Tell him,” Abed interrupted before Jeff could go full ex-lawyer mode, nodding his head at Troy and ignoring how good he looked in a blanket. _

_ “Me?” Troy asked, furrowing his eyebrows. “What about your email?” He sounded angry on the surface, but there was clear pain in his voice that Abed didn’t want to think about at the moment. _

_ “You weren’t supposed to see that,” Abed replied, tilting his head. He still was confused as to why Troy would be upset about something that wasn’t meant for him. Clearly Abed had just been trying to use his knowledge about Troy to win their war, and it’s not like it was anything Troy didn’t already know about himself. _

_ “You weren’t supposed to think those things.” _

_ Oh. _

_ So Troy did know that information about himself, but didn’t want Abed to think it too. He still didn’t fully understand, but it didn’t matter at the moment because Jeff was trying to fix things. What Jeff obviously didn’t get, though, was how deep the cuts had been made and how invested both parties were in this war. _

_ “Guys, look at yourselves,” he started, and Abed reluctantly made eye contact with Troy. Looking at the anger and betrayal so clearly etched on his face made it a lot harder to focus on this speech that Abed knew wouldn't change anything, but he tried to listen anyway. “You didn’t used to be like this. You were Troy” this is where the camera would cut to Troy’s face, full of resentment and pain instead of its usual giddiness and awe, “and Abed.” The cut to Abed’s face would happen here, where he’s sure the same feelings were mirrored. “Things used to be easy,” Jeff finished, and Abed knew from Troy’s face that nothing had changed and that something big was coming. He just hoped it wasn’t what he thought it was. _

_“He’s right,” Abed said, going for the trope where a character seems like they’re about to agree with a point, and then go right back to where they were a minute ago. His phone felt heavy in his pajama pants pocket, reminding him of Troy’s wrongdoings, the words “mental issues”_ _bouncing around his skull and refusing to let him forget. So he said it. He was the one who lit the fire. “Our friendship is dead.”_

_ “What?” Jeff asked, doing a double take, but Troy seemed to already be on board, throwing the gasoline onto the flames with all the force he could muster. _

_ “I’ll do you one better,” he said, taking a step closer. “Our relationship is dead. And whoever wins this war can stay in the apartment. Loser has to find a new place.” Abed tried to ignore the way Troy’s eyes shined and his lip trembled when he said that, but it seemed to be all he could think about after he agreed to the terms and retreated back to Pillowtown.  _

\------

Abed took deep breaths as he tried to force the memories out of his head, in and out, in and out. This was how he’d been waking up every day since the war, panicking and regretful. He knew that Troy was only a couple rooms over because they had agreed that leaving the apartment was too extreme, but it didn’t make the bottom bunk feel less lonely. He got up to change out of his decidedly-not-green pajamas, the words “our relationship is dead” ringing in his ears.

He was about to pull out his laptop and start his day of avoiding Troy when he heard a scream from the living room. Annie’s scream. 

Abed jumped up and ran into the living room, ignoring the fact that Troy was standing in the doorway of his new bedroom, looking concerned as well. Annie crouched in the middle of the room, screaming and whipping her head back and forth like she had in the bottle episode. Abed vaguely wondered if she had lost a pen before he saw Troy step forward, his eyebrows pinched together in confusion.

“What’s wrong, Annie?” he asked, and Abed realized it had been a few days since he’d even heard Troy talk. Sure, they had agreed to still be friends and live together after the war, but being broken up and having said awful things about each other takes a toll on a friendship. Most days, Abed just refuses to leave his room, texting Annie to bring him buttered noodles and spending the whole day in the blanket fort, watching Inspector Spacetime on his laptop and doing his best to avoid looking at the walls of the fort. Sometimes he makes it through a whole day without crying. Sometimes.

Annie, clearly very frazzled, knelt on the ground and started inspecting the floor, seeming to look for something. “I can’t believe it, guys,” she cried, sounding hysterical, “I almost lost the best thing that’s ever happened to me!” At that, she stood up slowly and pointedly, and brushed off her skirt with a poise that would not be expected from someone who had been screaming at max volume a minute ago. She gave each of them a very pointed look before walking briskly and calmly into her room, looking pleased with herself.

Abed widened his eyes and looked over at Troy, whose eyebrows were quite literally touching at this point. They just stood there, dumbfounded, for a few minutes, until Troy cleared his throat. “Uh, what was that?” he asked, now looking at the closed door that Annie had disappeared behind.

“It seems like Annie has gotten sick of us avoiding each other and tried to send us a message.” Abed responded, eyes on the floor. “A very blunt message, might I add.”

“Yeah, that was totally not subtle.” Troy was scratching the back of his neck now, his feet fidgeting where he stood barefoot on the hardwood. “Um, how are you?”

But Abed didn’t want to go through the typical small talk that had taken up all of their conversations recently. He didn’t want to fall back into their routine of saying “how are you”, replying “fine”, and pretending that they both meant F-Y-N-E when they knew it was a lie. So he cut the bullshit and answered the question honestly for the first time in two weeks.

“Not good. Not fine. Not even F-I-N-E, if I’m honest.” Abed looked up to see Troy’s face soften, a sign that he was probably, hopefully, feeling the same way. “Look, Troy, I don’t know about you, but I want to fix this. I know those friendship hats were a short-term solution, but clearly they were not meant to sustain all of the damage done that day. We’ve needed to have this conversation for weeks, and why not take Annie’s hint and do it now?”

Troy sighed and nodded, walking over to sit on the couch and motioning for Abed to join him. “Yeah, I know we need to do this. I miss you a lot,” He looked Abed in the eye, pausing and seeming to collect his thoughts before just going for it. “I thought you were the one person who didn’t see my weaknesses the way everyone else did. I thought you didn’t notice my emotional frailty or my level of intelligence, and that was why you hung out with me. I guess I figured that once you realized those things about me, there would be no reason for you to still wanna be my boyfriend, or friend, or even roommate,” Troy looked down at his lap, taking deep breaths, seemingly trying not to cry.

Abed drew his eyebrows together and tilted his head. “What are you talking about? Of course I noticed those things, I noticed them during our first year at Greendale.” Troy scooted a little further down the couch, but Abed caught his arm before he could go anywhere. “But I never thought they were weaknesses,” he continued, and Troy looked up at him with bated breath. “I only noted them as weak spots for the purpose of the war, and from a battle standpoint, they probably wouldn’t be assets. But in every other aspect of life, they’re your strengths, and what make you so great. I need you to be more emotional so that I can understand what you’re feeling, because we both know I don’t do well with social cues and I need exaggerated facial expressions to get it. And I only said you were insecure about your level of intelligence, not that you had a low one. You’re one of the smartest people I know, and I wish you realized it the way I do.” Abed looked him in the eyes and gave a small smile, and Troy smiled back and scooted over so their legs were touching where they sat on the couch.

Troy looked down at where he was wringing his hands nervously and Abed reached out and took one in his own, lacing their fingers together and squeezing just a bit to remind Troy that he was here, that they were going to figure this out and get back on track. Troy relaxed a bit before looking up at Abed and sighing. “I am so, so, so sorry about the text,” he breathed, a few tears actually falling this time. Abed’s face softened and he wiped a few of Troy’s tears away with his free hand, cupping the side of Troy’s face and wiping his cheek with his thumb as Troy tried to finish his thought. “I really didn’t mean any of it, I swear, I was just  _ so hurt _ by what you said because I thought it meant you didn’t love me anymore and you saw me as weak and not good enough to even be your friend-”

He was full-on sobbing now, and Abed shushed him and pulled him into a hug, rubbing circles into his back and running his fingers through his hair. “Troy, I would never think those things about you,” he whispered into his ear, and Troy wrapped his arms around Abed’s neck and melted into him. “I know you didn’t mean what you said, and that you don’t think of me that way, but I want to remind you that I would never consider you weak or not good enough for me.” He pulled away, gently holding Troy’s face and looking him in the eye. “And I will never stop loving you.”

Troy sighed contentedly and leaned in at the same time Abed did, pressing their lips together for a soft, sweet few seconds. Then Troy pulled away for a moment, mumbled “I never stopped loving you” against Abed’s lips, and wrapped his arms back around Abed’s neck, connecting their mouths once again. Abed softened at the contact, reveling in just being able to breathe in the same air that Troy did after losing that luxury for so long. He snuck his tongue into Troy’s mouth and Troy moaned quietly. Abed had missed this so much, couldn’t understand how he had survived the past two weeks without hearing the words “I love you” tumbling from Troy’s lips, without his hands in his hair or his scent on his clothes. Abed’s hands moved to Troy’s back, sneaking under his shirt and resting against the bare skin there, while Troy swung his leg around so he was straddling Abed’s lap. They made out for a few more minutes in that position, hands wandering and teeth biting. Troy was in the middle of sucking a hickey on Abed’s collarbone when they heard a door open and a soft “oh!” come from behind them.

Troy picked his head up and Abed looked over his shoulder at Annie, who was still standing in the doorway of her room, eyebrows raised. “Um, sorry guys, I just needed the scissors,” she mumbled, practically running to the kitchen cabinet where the office supplies were. She was back in her room before either of them could comment, but not without sending them a thumbs up and a smirk as she closed her bedroom door.

Troy giggled and leaned his head on Abed’s shoulder, pulling him into a hug. “You wanna take this somewhere more private?” he mumbled, so giddy that Abed could feel it where he smiled into his neck. Rather than give an answer, Abed stood up with Troy still wrapped around him, hoisting his legs up and carrying him into the ex-Dreamatorium bedroom. They collapsed onto the bed, laughing and still intertwined, and Abed wondered how it had been only half an hour ago that he had woken up in fear of living a nightmare. His eyes shone with fondness as he reveled in the knowledge that even after what was possibly the biggest-scale argument their town had seen, the two of them had made it through with their relationship intact. And if they could get through a 3-day all-out war over pillows and blankets, then they could get through virtually anything, armed with the realization that they would never and could never stop loving each other. 

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, as usual lmk anything you liked/didn't like about this fic! Having to rewatch Pillows and Blankets to get the flashback scene right was painful but worth it to be able to kind of fix the episode lol


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